Chris Selley’s Full Pundit: Leave Justin Trudeau alone

So much for rebuilding
The Liberals have tried nothing, and they’re all out of ideas.

The Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert reports that among Liberals, heaven help them, “the search for a game-changing leadership move has gained momentum since the NDP convention.” And you know what that means: It means the guy with the famous last name who swears blind he won’t run! Hébert’s not saying Justin Trudeau would win the leadership, mind you, or that it’s a good idea. She’s just saying that “Trudeau is the rock star of the current Parliament.” (We consider that position vacant, for the record.) And she’s saying that “for many Liberals, going into a do-or-die battle behind Trudeau — who is identified with an iconic legacy they are proud to defend — would come more easily than spending a campaign defending [Bob] Rae’s NDP record.” That, we can believe.

In Maclean’s, Paul Wells makes the case for Trudeau as a thoroughly plausible leadership candidate even taking genetics out of the equation. Trudeau has twice won a tough Quebec riding; “he is effortlessly bilingual”; “when he stands in a room, conversation stops”; and “he is a fundraising machine.” We wonder if his bloodlines might have crept stealthily back into the equation at this point — would they send Joe Smith on tour like they do Son of Pierre? — but we agree with Wells, and have said before, that we think Trudeau is generally underestimated nowadays, not overestimated. Still, over the course of an interesting discussion with Wells, Trudeau continues to insist “it’s not his time. Yet.”

The Sun Media editorialists are unconcerned about the federal government’s serial violations of its long-lost promise of openness and accountability because people who complain about it tend to be left-wing, because the CBC is also secretive, and because Canada didn’t make a list of the “10 worst countries in the world for media censorship.” Terrific.

TheGlobe and Mail’s editorialists welcome any and all measures, including those currently being undertaken by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, to streamline Canada’s immigration system and “headhunt” the best and most needed people. Migrants have ever more “options,” they say, and Canada seems to be slipping as a most-preferred destination. The longer we make people wait to come, and the more we jerk them around when they’re here, the more people are just going to say “screw it” and head for Australia.

In the Ottawa Citizen, Terry Glavin derides the environmental protection components of the government’s super-mega-omnibus budget bill as, above all else, unnecessary: “What influence has Canada’s all-powerful environmental movement really managed to exert upon the pace, the scope or the scale of Alberta’s oilsands development?” he asks. “The correct answer: pretty well none. “ He also suggests Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” with respect to Canadians’ opinions on fisheries management. British Columbians, anyway, seem to want more protections, not fewer. Glavin notes a poll in which 70% agreed that “wild salmon are as culturally important to the people of British Columbia as the French language is to the people of Quebec.” We’re intrigued anyone would even think to ask that question.

The fact that groups like the National Roundtable on the Environment or the Economy and the National Council of Welfare tend to be critical of the Conservative government isn’t the noblest reason to deny them funding, as Postmedia’s Andrew Coyne says. But there’s this weird notion that the feds are somehow obligedto fund such groups. They aren’t, and Coyne would go even further and reconsider the entire tax exemption system — as the Tories have already done with political party donations. “A charity’s whole purpose, whether or not it engages in advocacy, may be repugnant to one corner of opinion or the other,” says Coyne. “In which case, why should they be forced to fund it?”

Un Canadian errant
The Sun Media editorialists believe that since Conrad Black “gave up his birthright, relinquished his Canadian passport, and steered his way past lesser mortals as Lord Black of Crossharbour,” he should be allowed back into Canada “temporarily,” in order “to pack his bags,” but that’s it. We mustn’t issue a passport to Black, they say — at least not without a fight — lest Canadian citizenship “lose its considerable value in the world.”

The National Post’s editorialists, meanwhile, roll out the red carpet and dust off an old defence: Black “never would have been forced to make the decision [between Canada and Britain] in the first place if,” they say, if Jean Chrétien “had properly separated his duties as a prime minister from his partisan displeasure at the editorial policies of Mr. Black’s newspapers.”

It’s pretty simple, we think: Conrad Black was born in Canada, ergo he’s Canadian. The rest is fine print.

Duly noted
On the matter of the 12th-grader constantly wearing the “Life is wasted without Jesus” T-shirt, we entirely agree with Postmedia’s Michael Den Tandt that a valid approach would have been to tell “the kids who complained to stop being so damned sensitive.” And we certainly agree that Canadians in general need to grow a thicker skin when it comes to statements of which they disapprove. We do not agree, however, with Den Tandt’s likening of said T-shirt to the wearing of a crucifix or yarmulke in a public school. And we certainly do not agree with the Calgary Herald’s editorialists, who liken said T-shirt to one expressing a preference for the Vancouver Canucks, “for that implies that students who favour other hockey teams are wrong.”

The clue, we think, is right there on the T-shirt: “Life is wasted without Jesus” is not the same thing as “I like Jesus.” It just isn’t! And come on: What teenager in his right mind would be caught wearing Canucks paraphernalia?

The Globe’s Doug Saunders dismisses concerns, widely expressed during the French election campaign, that globalization threatens France with “dilution.” Noting the ubiquity of French companies in just about every aspect of European life, he suggests “the French are the globalizers, not the globalized.” As for concerns about immigrant assimilation, Saunders notes that “every study shows French Muslims have the highest rates of social integration. … The problem is that nobody gives them jobs. And the larger problem within France is not foreign capital, but the fact that people have trouble creating jobs.”

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.